Moby Lines open Toulon Bastia route

Date: 20 Nov 2009 00:00Source: Lloyds List

Moby Lines is to launch a new international ferry service from April of next year, adding Toulon to its existing service between Livorno and Bastia and buying in a second-hand vessel from Brittany Ferries to help manage the expansion.

The company said its new Toulon-Bastia-Livorno service would run four times a week year-round, starting on April 1.

Moby will spend almost €20m ($29.9m) to buy and remodel the Brittany Ferries vessel, understood to be the Pont l’Abbe, which will have capacity for 1,200 passengers, 450 cars and up to 700 lane metres of rolling cargo.

Company president Vincenzo Onorato said the service, which Moby had been working on for more than a year, would also mark its debut in the cargo segment on the motorways of the sea.

He attributed the move in part to the company’s strong and improving performance on routes between Italy and Corsica, on which passenger volumes had risen at an annual rate of around 14% to reach 650,000.

Moby’s new service also reflects the pressures of an increasingly competitive market, with ferry operators in the western Mediterranean looking to maximise services and routes, and tap into additional demand, at a time when prices are being forced inexorably downwards.

For more information, or to make a booking for this new ferry service, please visit the following pages: